


Puzzles and Riddles

by Leaves_and_Smithereens



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, But Mostly Humor, Loki Has Issues, Lots Of Quality Bedtime, Lots Of Snarky Conversation, M/M, Nice And Bittersweet Things, Ode To Frostiron, Tony's Issue Is Named 'Loki', Weird Perception Of Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leaves_and_Smithereens/pseuds/Leaves_and_Smithereens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Measurement of time has become a foreign concept, or at least a rather loose one as past and present intertwine like two interfering waves, leveling each other out.</p><p>For no particular reason, Loki reaches out to drag Stark with him, and for no particular reason, Stark lets himself be pulled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Puzzles and Riddles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stray_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stray_alchemist/gifts).



> For you Stray, because of reasons! Here, have my Ode to Frostiron! ;)
> 
> Thanks to [FelicityGS](http://archiveofourown.org/users/FelicityGS) for beta-reading.

It had started as a ruse. A ploy, a game—a hunt for the limits of a mortal mind. Entertaining in ways like pulling off the legs of a spider (people say he respects nothing, but he does, in fact, respect _perseverance_ ).

Or perhaps not.

Perhaps, it had just been the right mixture of madness and lust to end up in all-consuming flames, lips and teeth clashing together, anger-hate-passion-desire conducting a symphony of perfect disgrace.

Perhaps it had been just him, seeking diversion.

“ _Fuck!_ ”

It is Stark’s muffled swearing and another loud metallic _clang_ that startles Loki out of his musings.

Again.

Frowning, he hefts his eyes on the hunched-over, wriggling figure across the room.

Well.

He might instead just watch the mortal perform his idiotic tasks for a while. Occasionally, Loki has to admit, this is entertaining enough.

 

*****

 

It takes a full five minutes until Stark’s ridiculous head pulls out of the innards of the vehicle he once described to Loki as a “Ferrari 250 GT California Spider LWB”, and another ten until the man finally takes notice of his visitor. How Stark managed to stay alive until the very day is a mystery to him.

Loki earns a theatrical _‘Oh, it’s you again! Who’d have thought?’_ along with a flamboyant grin and a dirty rag thrown in the vague direction of the table he’s made himself comfortable against while he watched the mortal fuss over his toys.

Once back when he had started this little game, Loki had anticipated seeing the great Iron Man go down, torn apart between guilt and need, ashamed of what Loki made him do and crave.

However shame, it seemed, was a concept well and truly unknown to this man in particular. Rather than the frail little thing Loki took him for, Stark turned out to be a _vicious_ little creature instead, and whilst Loki drank in every gasp and moan from his mouth like a starved wolf licking blood from the ground, Stark revenged himself by biting his lips red, clawing his back raw, and hissing out his hatred like a mantra with each clipped breath.

_Ah._

_Now_ , these fawn eyes stare up at him expectantly, wide grin slowly fading into a bemused smirk as Stark lifts a dirtied hand to brush away a few unruly curls from his sweaty brow. The movement, as was to be expected, leaves a dark smear across his forehead. Loki wrinkles his nose.

“How can one single person be that filthy?”

Stark slips right into Loki’s personal space _(rude)_ , dips his head sideways—lips curling, eyes coy and mettlesome—and reaches up to brush his oily fingers across the side of Loki’s neck in a lazy gesture that makes it all the more infuriating.

“Mmh, everything for you, baby.”

Maybe he should have killed him.

With a deigning snort, Loki leans forward and buries his face in the crook of Tony’s neck.

Whatever the game’s original purpose may have been, what Loki had started so thoughtlessly didn’t take much time to get out of hand, to squirm and struggle and finally flee his grasp entirely to change into something much more complex, much more inscrutable, and Loki, though astonished, was all too eager to get behind its unfamiliar mechanics, because he has always _liked_ riddles.

“So Bambi—which part of the universe got the doubtful privilege of seeing your evil schemes blow up in your face this time?”

 _Definitely_ should have killed him.

“Please, Stark—my endeavors were most successful.”

Loki lingers at the seam of his scrubby jaw, inhaling the warm, heavy scent of Stark’s skin before drawing away to conjure a rather unimpressive hunch of black, battered metal. He holds it out in front of the mortal who takes a curious peek at the offering, eyes gleaming with childish delight as realization hits him.

To his chagrin, Loki’s attempt to repress the smirk that threatens to split his face is only part-way successful.

“Aw darling, you shouldn’t have,” Stark beams like the ridiculous idiot he is. His eyes slither down Loki’s face, only to come to an abrupt halt somewhere between his collar bone and his chin.

Stark frowns.

“Besides,” he proceeds in all earnest, “you have engine oil on your neck, did you notice?”

Somewhere in the back of Loki’s mind, a horde of Valkyries cries for the spilling of mortal blood and revenge of his sanity.

He has always been particularly fond of Valkyries.

“Stark, I swear, one of these days I shall—”

“Yeah, yeah, nice, here goes your quota of threatening people—let’s talk about the matter at hand: is this…?”

Loki sighs and bats away Stark’s fingers that threaten to rub their curiosity upon the shimmering ridges of the little object resting in his palm.

“Dwarf metal, _yes_. Don’t use your bare hands to touch it, or it will burn you terribly.”

Stark throws him a look as if he would doubt his sanity, too.

“Well, that certainly puts a downer on the general idea of _using_ that stuff, now doesn’t it?”

“Of course you have to forge it first, you imbecile. Give it shape and it will serve you. Subsequently, you can prod it with your smutty fingers all day long if you are so inclined.”

“Ah-ah- _ah_ , don’t give me that eye-roll, magic fingers—it’s my first with half-sentient fantasy metal, after all, so don’t rush me.”

When Loki had started his investigations, he at first had come to the conclusion that this new… thing was mostly held together by _rules—_ to his great disappointment.

Rules were something he knew all too well: they were what made it acceptable for Thor to bed a different maiden every night, but made it anything but acceptable for Loki to enjoy the touch of a man.

Rules were what taught him stealth: if the look of contempt on the face of your lover gives you grief, make his replacements look at themselves with contempt instead. If one meets your smile with disdain, swallow it down next time. If people whisper, make them regret it.

He has always been a quick learner. He has always hated rules.

Inquisitive, Stark’s eyes follow the movement of Loki’s hand to where he places the metal besides him on the desk. For a moment, he contemplates picking it back up to draw lines in the air in front of the mortal’s face only to see if he would follow them too.

However, Stark snuffs out this possibility by taking the last step separating them to snuggle his laughable short body between Loki’s legs and into his arms, head resting against his shoulder.

“You hate dwarfs,” Stark remarks, stating the obvious.

“I do,” Loki says and lets his fingers comb through messy hair. Once, Loki had tried to explain to Stark that the Svartálfar are, technically, no dwarfs at all—though he called it a hopeless endeavor after Stark started to butcher the word on purpose (which had _absolutely_ _not_ been funny).

“Yeah. Thanks, I guess. For getting it anyway.”

It has taken Loki some time to realize that what he initially took for rules was in fact something else entirely. Prodding at its parameters, it unfolded before his eyes to grant him a glimpse upon its fine precision without _explaining_ anything, and what he saw was a thing of beauty: instead of the contrived fussiness of shall not-s and ought not-s, this little thing worked on principles entirely its own, consisting of chaos and probability—an elaborated game of cause and consequence, and to make it even better, its mechanics kept changing over time.

Like when Stark developed the tendency to _await_ Loki’s return from his various commitments in certain intervals: if Loki was held up, thus returning late, he found Stark making a ruckus—but if he was incidentally early, Stark became irritated instead (Loki had always preferred to let people wait).

However, relations had shifted in the most imperceptible ways, but of course it didn’t slip Loki’s notice that aspects of ‘too early’ were relabeled ‘too late’ as time went by (the _new_ late suited him better, anyway—Loki was getting more and more efficient at bringing his schemes and plots to fruition).

In conclusion: this thing, whatever it was, kept Loki most splendidly entertained.

Loki snorts.

“I merely passed Svartálfaheimr on my way back. _Please_ tell me you don’t delude yourself with the idea I would go to great lengths for you.”

Tony leans back to look at him, that insufferable grin of his plastered firmly onto his face.

“Of course you would never. That would be rather—”

“Ridiculous.” 

“Yeah.”

Seemingly satisfied with the outcome of this conversation, Stark lets his head drop back to where it rested before, smiling still.

There’s a rare moment of blessed silence, and Loki tries to _not_ count down seconds. He fails.

“So,” Stark murmurs into his collarbone after five have passed by, “wanna fuck?”

Loki closes his eyes. There is laughter welling up within him, unstoppable like an ocean’s tide, until it gushes from his lips in silver gales.

He can feel Stark’s grin widen against his neck, probably adding a mark on a mental list of sorts. _Times I successfully annoyed a God._ Loki guesses its count is rather impressive by now.

“Is that a yes?”

“Get rid of that smelly oil on your hands and it very well might be.”

 

*****

 

To pinpoint the exact moment in time when a ruse became a _thing_ is equally impossible to answer as the question of _why_ it had happened in the first place.

A lesser mind would have probably called it a mixture of carelessness and opportunity, and even would have named a distinct day; but Loki was never so stupid as to mistake the proof for the cause.

No. Perhaps it had just been habit that let desire outweigh the hatred in Stark’s glazed-over eyes with time, or perhaps it had been Stark’s practical mind; but whatever the initial mechanism, proof has it that at some point, it must have slipped Stark’s grasp as well.

Stark.

_Desire._

There is a certain character to Stark’s desire, to the way his hands roam Loki’s body, to the sly smile on his face when he draws a gasp from scarred lips: it’s a certain brand of sensuality that Loki knows all too well.

He meets Stark’s half-lidded eyes, and what he sees smoldering in the dark is a soul on fire—a playful, vicious little thing—and as Loki watches, Stark’s smile changes into the sharpness of a toothy grin while he returns Loki’s gaze in that obscene, sinful, _daring_ way of his.

He wonders how things would have been if he could have met this most delicious being centuries ago; how it would have been, enjoying the company of a twin-soul to his, sly and curious, thirsting for knowledge, sparking delightfully with wit and sensuality.

He wonders if he would have been relieved or terrified to find an open doorway and a path leading out of his golden cage.

“Shit, you’re doing it again.”

Loki’s focus snaps forward in time.

Beneath him, Stark mutters in frustration before finally ceasing his futile attempts to seek friction by means of wriggling his pinned down hips upwards. Loki snorts and proceeds to sway down his own in unhurried circles, prompting Stark to sigh with relish.

“Doing _what_? Making you squirm like an eel?”

“No—well, yes, but what I mean is you’re _thinking_ _in bed_ —don’t do that! It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong here, which is odd. Also highly improbable.”

“Stark. You are lying on your back, _doing nothing_.”

“Aw, you’re such a dirty liar; I’m giving you a marvelous hand-job here. Besides, I heard that gasp, Tinker Bell.”

“You truly are as gravely deluded as impertinent: I merely yawned.”

“Now, that’s low, even for your standards. Also rude. I think you should apologize. Preferably by riding me into this mattress right about now.”

Loki shakes his head, smirking, slipping away.

“As you should know by now, I never apologize.”

He leans back and down, sprawling out onto smooth linen smelling of Stark—dark and earthy… _familiar_.

Somehow, Loki’s foot gets caught by a hand, and it doesn’t take long until the rest of Stark follows, warm skin sliding up Loki’s legs, accompanied by the whisper-touch of a mouth ascending his thighs.

“I’m curious,” Stark murmurs while following the curve of Loki’s erection with his nose, “Is this the same kind of _‘never’_ as the one you used long ago in conjunction with _‘beg’_?”

“Oh, _be_ silent already and put that insolent mouth of yours to better use.”

Stark laughs, and for once, he does as has been told.

_Delicious._

Loki lets go of here and now, trusting the sensation to keep him secured in time.

It’s nice to let it all bleed together again, a multitude of sensations, but there is one in particular that resonates within him the most, one he wants to relish anew, and it is—

Proof.

The _proof_ that something was going terribly wrong occurred on a night starting like so many others: with Stark pinned beneath him, squirming and cursing and demanding more, _always_ _more_ , and perhaps it had been due to the wounds Loki had received earlier in battle, or perhaps because Stark without his armor didn’t even remotely pose a threat, but anyway had it been careless behavior on Loki’s behalf that let him fall asleep beside the mortal after they were spent and done with their usual debauchery.

He woke some time later because something was off, a vague feeling that he had learned over centuries to never ignore that made his eyes fly open, but left everything else at rest: his breath level, his mind composed, his senses observant.

Stark was propped up on his elbow, lost in rapt contemplation as he let his gaze wander slowly over the silhouette of Loki’s naked body, lying there beside him with bended knees and arms tucked under his head.

Loki already wanted to snarl his irritation, but suddenly, Stark had lifted a hand, and Loki had to stifle the mindless impulse to withdraw instead by reminding himself that there was no threat.

Yet, he failed to keep his heart from skipping as hesitant fingers reached out for his ribcage.

To his mind came pictures of _claws-talons-scratches_ , but somehow, he said nothing, _did_ nothing, so Stark closed the distance unaware until he touched Loki’s skin with nothing but his fingertips, just the ghost of a touch, but to Loki, it felt like a jolt, and as Stark brushed down the path his gaze had just discovered in such tender a fashion, Loki’s breath hitched in surprise.

Of course, that had been the moment when Stark realized his mistake. Pulling away as if burned, he stared right back into lacerated eyes, a look of bewilderment on his face to match Loki’s own.

Loki’s head swims.

Measurement of time has become a foreign concept, or at least a rather loose one as past and present intertwine like two interfering waves, leveling each other out.

For no particular reason, Loki reaches out to drag Stark with him, and for no particular reason, Stark lets himself be pulled.

Back then, there still had been awareness, somewhere in the hidden corners of his mind, that this was a bad idea. Yet he dragged Stark with him, who all too easily followed, his lips finding Loki’s, and he felt like _drowning_.

He urges upwards, tries to reach the surface by means of concentrating on Stark’s weight instead: he enjoys being grounded like this, with Stark weighing down on him (it’s not much of course, but Loki likes it anyway). Things feel _real_ and he feels sheltered. He wraps his legs around Stark’s back and drags him even closer.

He _knew_ he shouldn’t.

He knew he couldn’t tolerate another disdainful face.

But this, _this_ _felt_ _so very good_.

Feels.

It _feels_ so very good.

Loki lets his head fall back; lids flutter close so he may better feel—Stark’s tongue, lapping at the hollow beneath his throat, a thumb, brushing along the sharp line of his jaw, another hand, stroking firmly but slowly, timed with the tantalizing rhythm the hips between his legs have established, kindling his urges even more instead of easing them. Every thrust sends a jolt up his spine until all of his body is on fire, blood condensing to molten desire, and Loki can’t help it nor can he control that he coils and rises against every touch, seeking _more_ and something to hold onto until he finds Stark’s shoulders—Loki’s neck gets bitten as he digs in too hard—and at least, fortunately, graciously, Stark does speed things up then. He hisses when Loki clenches around him in mindless need, and a drawn-out, urgent tone is swelling in Loki’s ears that probably falls from his own lips, but he doesn’t care because everything is just far, _far_ _too much_.

Years, moments, centuries ago, he realized horrified and _too late_ , that he wouldn’t be able to bear a look of disdain on _this_ face in particular, and that _nothing_ , not even cutting it right from Stark’s face, would be quite able to soothe the sting.

But then Stark bends _(bended)_ forward, buries his hands into Loki’s hair and moans a litany of words into his ear, words like _fuck_ and _gorgeous_ and _Loki_ , and finally, _finally_ the wave he is riding breaks, leaving him to cry out in relief, white noise flooding his ears while blinding, searing ecstasy whitens out his vision as well, but Tony sees him through, nuzzling his cheek, stroking, gently rocking his hips to prolong their pleasure until it borders on torture again and Loki laughs out breathlessly and tells Stark _stop or I’ll make you._

Luckily, satisfaction makes the mortal compliant like a lazy cat, so he chooses to snuggle up to Loki with a pleased sigh instead of forcing him to _do_ something. Pacified, Loki drags his arms around his lover and closes his eyes.

Long ago, they remained _(remain)_ this way for what felt like an eternity; Anthony laying on top of him, head nestled beneath his chin, nose in the crook of his neck, keeping quiet for once, while Loki listened to the fluttering of their hearts calming down, their breaths evening out, and the barely noticeable hum of the machine in Stark’s chest.

Loki let his fingers glide drowsily through black-brown strands, and somehow, for no reason, _he feels pleasantly well._

“You know,” Stark murmurs into his neck, disrupting the silence, voice sluggish with sleep, “I still hate your guts.”

Loki smirks. Reaching up, he lets his hand wander tenderly through the salt-and-pepper that Stark’s hair has become.

“It is mutual,” he whispers, and sinks back into sleep.

Tomorrow (future; there is also a future to this, he thinks), they have to forge dwarf metal, after all.


End file.
